I’m always recommending books for writers. I have a whole page (The Reading List) here at Change The World With Words dedicated to books about writing, and I even set up an Amazon aStore full of books on writing, publishing and world-changing, plus a bit of fiction and non-fiction I thought readers might like. (Check out the store here. You can shop from it using your usual Amazon account).

Recently, I’ve come across several Kindle ebooks about writing being offered for really low prices. All the following are currently being offered for under $3 on Amazon. They’re amazing value and well worth the (very small) investment if you use a Kindle as your main reading device.

Books About Writing in the Kindle Store

The Moonlighter’s Guide to Online Writing For Immediate Income by Connie Brentford $2.99

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More by Brian Cohen $2.99

Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K M Welland $2.99

Telling Your Tale Workbook: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Fiction for Print and eBook by Angela Benson $2.99

Writing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook by Daniel Mega $2.99

Writing for Change: journaling and reflecting through creative writing by Jacqui Malpass $2.99

How to Write A Book In 48 Hours by Jack Marrow $2.99

200 Writing Prompts by David Stoddard $0.99

Plotting Simplified: Story Structure Tips for the Break-out Novelist by Eddie Jones $0.99

250 Things You Should Know About Writing by Chuck Wendig $0.99

A Writer’s Workshop by A K Alexander $0.99

So You Want to Write A Novel by J P Kurzitza (usually $0.99, currently free)

Write Good or Die edited by Scott Nicholson (usually $0.99, currently free)

Pricing in the Kindle store is subject to change, and freebies don’t often stay free for long. If you like the look of any of these I recommend you get them quickly.

Of course, different books will suit different people. Feel free to click through, have a look at each one, read any reviews and use the Amazon “look inside” feature. You’d have to be a pretty versatile writer to be interested in all of them. Then again, you could buy the whole list and still have spent less than $25. When you look at the prices of many online writing courses and ebooks, that seems like a bargain to me.

If you don’t have a Kindle yet, you can buy one here.

I’ll check these links regularly, but if you’re clicking through and finding the prices have gone up please let me know via the comments. Appreciate it.

Image by Tina Phillips at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Just a short announcement today. If you were reading Change The World With Words last November you may remember I did a series of interviews with authors participating in National Novel Writing Month.

One of the authors was Karen A. Wyle and the novel she discussed in her interview, Twin-Bred, is now on KDP Select. Amazon Prime members can borrow the book for free, from now until around May 10, 2012, and everyone can download it for free from Amazon today, (February 16th 2012).

Karen’s short story The Baby is also available as a free download. I’ve just read it, and as an avid reader (and writer) of the genre generally referred to as speculative fiction, I loved it.

If you don’t have a Kindle yet, you can buy one here.

If you’re already a Kindle addict, and love to read books about writing, stop by Change The World With Words on Monday (21st February).  I’ll be sharing some super-affordable Kindle goodies for writers.

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For many years I wasn’t a big fan of free writing. It seemed a waste of time to me to devote even a short amount of time to ‘random’ writing when I could be planning and producing a specific, saleable piece of work.

Then a writing tutor suggested “focused free writing”, using the techniques of free writing but writing around a vague idea or topic I wanted to develop. I’ve been using this approach ever since and it has a few benefits that really work for me.

What is free writing?

That’s a good question. I know what it is, but find it difficult to explain. I’m not in the habit of using Wiki Wisdom, but on this occasion I actually like the definition Wikipedia provides:

“Free writing — also called stream-of-consciousness writing — is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism. It is used mainly by prose writers and writing teachers. Some writers use the technique to collect initial thoughts and ideas on a topic, often as a preliminary to formal writing.”

Focused free writing is similar to brainstorming, but less focused, if that makes sense. It’s more like a brain dump, where you pour out, without really thinking about it, all the related (or even unrelated) thoughts, ideas and feelings you have about your topic.

As the above definition stresses, the result of free writing is “raw, often unusable material” which is why I thought of it as a waste of my precious writing time for so long. But now I’ve learned to mine that raw unusable material for nuggets that can be polished into usable material, and I’ve discovered a few benefits along the way. Here, in my always-debatable opinion, are some of the reasons to try free writing.

Benefits of Free Writing

• Free writing can be a source of inspiration

I’ve finally realized that inspiration for your writing projects really does come while you’re writing, not while you’re staring at a blank page or screen. This is an excellent reason to just dive in and get started on your novel, story or article. It’s also an excellent reason to regularly practise free writing.

Ideas that have surfaced (for me) during the act of free writing:

An idea for an unrelated story.

An entire (previously unplanned and unimagined) scene that really helps my current story objectives.

Random bits of dialogue, that may need polishing but that are funny/realistic/useful in portraying character and motivation.

Titles for future works.

Strange scenarios to build a future story around.

Random sentences that have become the opening sentence of my next short story.

Random observations that have been a springboard for a personal essay or op-ed piece.

• Free writing can help you see if your idea “has legs”.

Some ideas have legs, some don’t. And some have longer legs than others. Free writing around an idea helps you decide if you can commit to producing a finished piece of work based on this particular idea. It can also help you determine what that finished piece should look like. Don’t be disappointed if you free write around an idea that you thought would develop into a novel/non-fiction book and find you only have enough material there for a short story/ article. Write the short story/article and then start experimenting with a new idea for your novel/non-fiction book. Free writing saved you time and provided you with a finished piece you can sell in the meantime.

• Free writing can move your plot forward.

If your work of fiction is flagging, free writing can help you move it forward, whether in a very focused way (coming up with a range of “what if” scenarios) or in a less focused way (simply think about your plot problems for a minute or two, then try doing a totally random piece of free writing). When you read over the piece afterwards you might find you’ve solved your own problems, either consciously or subconsciously.

• Free writing can help you focus.

When you have too many ideas buzzing around in your head free writing can act as a “brain dump”, letting you get those ideas down on paper so you can focus on the one idea you actually want to start building a piece of writing around today. In short, free writing can transfer to paper the ideas that would nag at your subconscious while you were trying to write something else.

• Free writing gets you started.

As the definition suggests, free writing can help overcome apathy and self-criticism. Even if you can’t mine anything useful from your initial free writing exercise, if it gets you in the mood for writing and stops procrastination, it has served a purpose.

If you want to explore free writing and related writing skills further, you may find these books helpful:

How To Be a Writer: Building Your Creative Skills Through Practice and Play by Barbara Baig

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Or check out our reading list and online book store.

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We often talk about book promotion here at Change The World With Words, and there’s a lot to learn if you’re just starting out as a self-published or indie author.

Gaining exposure for your book can involve everything from planning blog tours to  producing book trailers and a whole lot more. But if you have a book for sale on Amazon, you might be missing out on sales simply from lack of visibility on the site. Many authors have no idea how easy it is to increase their book’s exposure by updating a few things from their Amazon Central account. 

Three simple tricks that can help you get more exposure for your book:

• Update your categories, keywords, subjects, and tags

If you put some time and research into choosing the best categories, quality keywords, specific subjects, and appropriate tags, you can quickly raise your ranking on Amazon, and that can make your book more visible to prospective buyers.

• Fill out your Amazon sales page

Include as much information as possible on your books sales page. The more you can tell your potential customers about you and your book, the more likely it is that they’ll spend money on it.

• Put together a best-seller book launch

Having a best-seller book launch can encourage people to buy your book, and increase your rating at the same time. Just because you’re a new or little-known author, it doesn’t mean you can’t put together a professional book launch, complete with press releases, a basic media kit, book readings and prize-winning contests.

If you want to find out more about creating a bestseller book launch, and the other strategies mentioned above, you might want to consider Shelley Hitz’s new product: ‘Amazon for Authors’. This guide for authors-on-a-budget walks you through the process of optimizing your book sales on Amazon and Kindle. Besides covering the above tips in detail, Shelley covers tricky issues like digitally “autographing” your books, how to track your sales data, and much more. Learn more at her website Self-publishing-coach.com and consider signing up for her free newsletter for regular self-publishing and book promotion tips.

Thinking about self-publishing your next book, or re-publishing a previously published out-of-print book as a self-publisher? New technology is making both options more common, and easier to do. Check out our huge resources list, Fifty Self Publishing Resources for Authors.

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If there’s one piece of advice I wish I’d listened to a little earlier in my writing career it’s the advice to create multiple income streams. It’s great to get paid to write. It never fails to make me happy when I see that ‘You’ve Got Money” email from Paypal or get a check in the mail for an article or story I’ve written. But once you’ve got your writing career underway, there are other opportunities to start generating income that’s linked to your writing but not a direct result of it.

I consider ‘direct’ writing income to be a payment that is made to me in return for a piece of writing I’ve produced. This could be an article for a magazine, website content or PR material for a corporate client, or a short story for an anthology, magazine or contest.

But once I set up my own blog I realized I also had an opportunity to create another income stream, AND help my readers and subscribers at the same time. By offering my readers high quality writing related products I can put writers in touch with great writing resources and create some extra income via commissions. This is generally known as affiliate marketing, and unfortunately, it doesn’t have the best reputation.

Too many affiliate marketers are aggressive, in-your-face sales people. They email you every five minutes with new offers or cold call you during dinner or network with you online and then bombard you on Twitter and Facebook with sales pitches.

Good marketers are subtle, valuable providers of useful high-quality products, and they always offer a lot more than a sales pitch.

My tips for writers who want to create an affiliate marketing income stream.

The product comes first.

Always promote something you love, don’t look for something to promote. So whenever you read a book or ebook (or take a course) and you think it will be of use to your readers, check if it has an affiliate program, and if it does sign up. Then you can mention the product or service to your readers and include an affiliate link. You can (and should) spread the word about anything that you think might be of interest to your readers. If there’s no affiliate program, go ahead and talk about it anyway, but if there is one, it’s perfectly OK to take a cut of the profits.

Disclose

I have a simple disclosure page here at CTWWW. You should always let readers know if you’re earning commissions from sales you make. If you’re recommending or endorsing a product, you can be on shaky legal ground if you don’t disclose this fact. See FTC guidelines for online advertisers here.

Marketing is about finding an audience, not selling a product.

I like the J A Konrath quote:

 “Selling isn’t about forcing people to buy something they don’t want; it’s about finding the people who are interested in your product.”

So find an audience of people who are trying to do what you’re trying to do (for example, make money from writing, or self-publish a book) and when you find a product that helps you, you know that it will probably help your readers too. (Or it may not. I decided early on to try and find products that offer a money back guarantee so that if a reader buys something through me that’s not a good fit, they should always be able to get a refund.) The trick of successful marketing is to find potential customers for what you have to sell. Believe it or not, that’s a whole lot easier than trying to sell to people who don’t want or need your product.

Serve your readers (all of them)

You’re a writer, first and foremost, and people read your articles, blog posts and social media streams because they’re interested in what you have to say. Always bear that in mind.

Some of your readers are at a stage in their writing career where they’re ready to spend money on a course, ebook or other product. Others aren’t. I try really hard to serve both. That’s why I like to offer my readers freebies, and I like to work with affiliate programs that are willing to do that too. I picked up a lot of advice from websites, blogs, free newsletters and free ebooks before I started investing money in my writing career. I like to serve readers who are at that stage by offering lots of free advice, as well as highlighting high quality paid products for those who want to take their writing further by investing in themselves and their writing.

I wrote about my two favorite affiliate programs for writers and authors in a previous post. Find out why I use them and why I think they offer a great service to both affiliates and buyers, right here.

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This year I’m partnering with a couple of cool organisations to bring you some useful resources for writers and authors. Some of them are free, some of them aren’t. If you’re at a stage in your writing career where you want to start investing in yourself, you can choose to buy through me and support this site at the same time (see what that means here).

If you’re not, that’s fine too. All articles here at Change The World With Words are free and always will be. (I also get a real kick out of sharing other free resources I find, and I seem to find a lot – maybe it’s Karma sending me free writing goodies because I always pay them forwards. Feel free to subscribe if you want to know about new free writing resources as I find them.)

If you’re a writer looking for affiliate programs to join in order to offer your readers valuable resources and create an extra income stream for yourself, I recommend these programs.

In 2012 I’ll be working with an organisation called My Help Hub.

Why?

They have really high quality products for writers, mainly ebooks and online courses, that cover different types of writing and other skills related to writing and getting your work published.

Their paid products are reasonably priced, often come with bonuses and offer a money-back guarantee.

They have a good mix of products that will appeal to different readers (we’re an eclectic mix here at CTWWW), from The Wealthy Writer online course to their Writer’s Block CD to the Novel in a Month course. Perhaps my favourite E-product purchased last year was their excellent How To Write A Children’s Book.

Like me, they like to be generous. They offer a huge selection of free resources for writers through Writers Giveaway, that you can start downloading right now if you want (click here).

If you’re a writer with your own blog or site and you’d like to partner with My Help Hub to offer some of their products to your readers and followers, check out their affiliate program here.

I’ll also be working with the lovely Shelley Hitz from Self-Publishing-Coach.com.

Why?

Shelley also offers great products, albeit in a narrower range. Most of her products are aimed at helping writers develop specific skills in the area of self-publishing and book marketing, though her book marketing and promotion resources are also excellent for traditionally published authors looking to build their brand and sell more books.

These products are very affordable. Shelley is known for over-delivering and offering far more (including bonuses) than you would expect for the price she charges.

The range of products covers almost everything new and aspiring authors need to know (and lots of things more experienced authors should know but don’t). Products include Ebook Publishing Success, Get Your Kindle Ebook Done, and Twitter 101 For Authors.

Shelley also loves a freebie. You can pick up over 200 free tools for authors over at her site Self-Publishing-Coach.com or download a couple of her free reports, Book Marketing on a Shoestring Budget: YouTube Strategies for Authors and Book Marketing on a Shoestring Budget: Guest Blogging for Success right here at CTWWW.
 

If you’re looking to invest in yourself in 2012, please consider some of the products mentioned above or listed on the resources page (or check out the reading list and online book store for good-value books about writing and publishing). And if not, go ahead and download the freebies mentioned above.

If you haven’t already seen our Win an iPad2 or Kindle Fire contest, you might want to check it out. You’ll need something to read your new Ebooks and online course materials on:)

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Today I’m changing the world (just a little bit) by sharing this Rafflecopter giveaway. Rafflecopter is a tool that enables us bloggers to give stuff away to you, our loyal readers.

Rafflecopter is celebrating the New Year and it’s brand new FREE version with a launch party, and for good measure they’re giving away an 16GB Apple iPad2 and several Kindle Fires. (If you’re a regular here you’ll know I love my Kindle, and am constantly blogging about all the free ebooks you can download to read on yours.)

Use the entry form below, and don’t forget to tell them that KAREN BANES sent you.
If you enter through me, and win, then I win too! Yes it really is a win, win situation

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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January is a time when many writers re-assess their writing careers and their goals for the future. For me, that includes making plans for continuing education, in one form or another.  I’m pretty cheap, so I’m constantly looking for free, nearly free or good value learning experiences that will take my writing to the next level.

This week I’m excited about a free online flash class I’ll be attending with Christina Katz, author of some of my favorite practical writing books, such as Writer Mama and Get Known Before The Book Deal.  Christina’s new book is The Writer’s Workout, and everyone who purchases a copy by January 9th can get in on a free flash class with Christina.

Christina will be coaching writers in every genre on the following three topics:

• How to Assess The Power of Your Writing Portfolio  
• How to Build Your Best Bio for 2012
• How to Discover Your Unique Platform Dynamic

The book itself is great value (the paperback is currently selling for less than $13 on Amazon) but this free coaching session adds a shot of extra value, making it a worthwhile investment that will help writers at all levels get 2012 off to a great start.

Still undecided? Don’t know if Christina’s brand of writing wisdom is for you? Here are a few of my favorite tips from The Writer’s Workout.

• “Consider each year a new learning cycle and get used to putting your skills through new paces if you want them to grow.”

Couldn’t agree more. Continuing education, lifelong learning, constant skill-building – if you’re not fired up about these things then becoming a successful freelance writer is going to be much more of a challenge than it needs to be.

• “Will my work make good things happen? Is a good touchstone question for writers. If whatever you are devoted to will make good things happen, go forward and prosper with it as best you can.”

Statements like this assure me that I’m reading the work of a writer who is in tune with me, my values and the over-riding message I try to spread through Change The World With Words and my other writing projects.

• “We’re much more interested in the observations that come to bear from a well-lived life than we are of the preoccupations of a one-note mind.”

I love this quote. The thing that fuels a writing career more than anything else is life experience. While books, courses, retreats and critiques can help, the single most important ingredient of good writing may be “a well lived life”.

Still interested? You can order the book here, get the details on the coaching session here, and find out what Christina’s previous students and clients think about her here. Hope to see you there on the 10th, getting your 2012 learning cycle off to a productive start.

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Even though I’m not a big believer in the tradition of making New Year resolutions, I’m loving this tip to clarify your New Year dreams, from Rochelle Melander, author of  a favorite writing book of mine, Write-A-Thon: Write Your Book in 26 Days, (And Live To Tell About It). Thanks Rochelle.

New Year Dreams

By Rochelle Melander

Not easy to find the balance,  for if one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

—May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

People who record their dreams and goals are better able to achieve them. They are also happier and healthier. Record your visions, dreams, and goals for the New Year. Sometimes the best way to do this is to complete a sentence repeatedly until you run out of ideas. It may take five minutes (or more) to discover what you really want.

Try completing these sentences:

• In the New Year, I want to give up . . .
• In the New Year, I want to take on . . .
• In the New Year, I will rock my life by . . .
• In the New Year, I will strengthen my body and spirit by . . .
• In the New Year, I will work to change my world by . . .

A word of warning — this kind of dreaming can change your life!

Try it and see what happens.

Write Now! Coach Rochelle Melander teaches professionals how to write faster, get published, establish credibility, and navigate the new world of social media. Get your free subscription to her Write Now! Tips Ezine at http://www.writenowcoach.com and sign up to be a member of her Write Now! Mastermind class for professionals at http://www.writenowmastermind.com

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Happy New Year, fellow bloggers, writers and authors.  Please take a free gift to help you organize (and meet) your blogging  and writing goals for 2012.

If, like me, one of your goals for 2012 is to improve your blog and get your blogging and writing career better organized, you’ll want to download this free planner and calendar from BlogEnergizer.com. It’s aimed at bloggers but can be adapted to plan all your writing projects, as well as keeping your regular blog posts and other blogging tasks on track.

The calendar has sections for listing your planned posts, guest posts, emails to send out and your daily promotional activities.

 It also highlights important dates from World Aids Day to National Mentoring Month, giving you instant ‘hooks’ or ideas to structure your blog posts and articles around.

Best of all it’s free, and available for instant download. No sign-up required.

Get the free download here:

http://blogenergizer.com/download-blogging-calendar/

For more free writing and blogging resources, check out the freebie page, or subscribe for future offers. 2012 will be full of them

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